NDA crowdsourcing: Data or democracy at work?

In the past 18 months, nearly three million comments from citizens on diverse subjects have reached mygov.in, the crowdsourcing inbox of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government.

Since July 2014, when this portal was set up with the objective of people's participation in governance, 487 themes ranging from the Union Budget to Digital India, Swachh Bharat to net neutrality, Indian Institute of Management Bill to smart cities have been discussed, with the number of registered members touching 1.87 million.

In the meantime, other platforms of crowdsourcing have also opened up, the most prominent being Prime Minister Narendra Modi's app to connect with him directly, besides a clutch of audio options when anybody wants to be heard by the powers who matter.

The PM had said at the launch of mygov.in that the success of democracy was impossible without the participation of people. However, there's no clear indicator yet on how much of the ideas' bank, generated through people's participation, is being used in policies, schemes and projects of this government.

Arvind Gupta, who leads Bharatiya Janata Party's information and technology team, said: "I cannot give a percentage of how much of the inputs received from people have been executed, but the significance of the exercise lies in engaging citizens in participatory governance."

Gupta cites the example of getting logos for schemes such as Jan Dhan and Swachh Bharat from crowdsourcing, to indicate the people's feedback is being put to use.

According to a civil servant, who did not wish to be named, the usefulness of getting ideas from people for schemes and policies ''is entirely unproven".

Karuna Gopal, president of Futuristic Cities, a think tank, pointed out that ideas would get generated faster than the government can implement them. "These ideas sometimes will be raw and may not reflect the nuanced understanding of implementation challenges." She said, "I personally prefer 'strategy crowd sourcing' over 'idea crowd-sourcing'."

Gopal was referring to something akin to what Washington DC had done in 2011 when it crowdsourced IT solutions for its government departments and implemented them. She added that the US government was using crowdsourcing for new spy drone designs, and Singapore's low-cost housing design was a result of a 'challenge'', too.

At Futuristic Cities, an initiative was taken in 2009 to crowd-source strategies for making cities liveable, Gopal recounts.

As for mygov.in, the ideas and inputs are a combination of bizarre and sound advice, but there's hardly any solution to any problem so far. Here are a few. In an input for PM's Mann Ki Baat radio address, a citizen writes jaggery could be used instead of sugar in cola drinks. In a Skill India discussion, there's a view that India will pay a heavy price if the initiative fails. Also, "PM, you are working very hard but the common man is yet to get relief in relation to his basic needs.''

Another advice is for a public toilet and a dustbin every 100 metres in Bengaluru.

Backing net neutrality, a citizen writes: "We want access to everything on the net free of cost." Then there's a voice asking for a modified model of Free Basics for which the government could work with Facebook. On IIM Bill 2015, an alumni writes, "This is not a Bill for excellence. Please leave them autonomous." Another one says on the same Bill, "Excellent work. Bill is 100 per cent perfect, which will take IIMs and India to new heights."

Narayanan Ramaswamy, head of education practice at consulting firm KPMG, believes while the government is not required to act on every suggestion it receives, the expectation of the people is increasing because of crowdsourcing. "The government must be sensitive to people's expectation…. Once they start giving inputs and start participating, they become restless and want to know the result.''

Ramaswamy added the government's effort seems to be genuine, but there's a need to quickly show that things are moving so that people's enthusiasm is not dampened.

Like Gopal said, the PM might have begun with ideas crowdsourcing to engage people as a first step, but could very well go up to the next level of asking for full solutions and designs, not only ideas. While that will be the real test for participatory democracy, for now, the government's corpus of knowledge is overflowing with Big Data, according to Gopal. "Even if 10 per cent of this gets implemented, it's great news.''

PUBLIC INPUTS

• In an input on PM's 'Mann Ki Baat' radio address, a citizen writes jaggery could be used instead of sugar in cola drinks
   
• In a Skill India discussion, there's a view that India will pay a heavy price if the initiative fails
   
• Backing net neutrality, a citizen writes: "We want access to everything on the net free of cost"
   
• On IIM Bill 2015, an alumni writes, "This is not a Bill for excellence. Please leave them (institutes) autonomous."